49. BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY
On Saturday night, two no-hit bids were foiled in the seventh inning during the Mets-Giants
game at Citi Field. Over at the Atlantic Theatre, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s
BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY was taking a theatrical no-hitter even further into
the evening, but as the play neared 10:00 p.m. the playwright faltered slightly.
The no-hitter was over but Mr. Guirgis still came out a winner. His play, despite
a too soft final inning, leaps directly onto the short list of the young season’s
best new work, both for the distinctive quality of its writing and the
all-around excellence of its production. And, in Stephen McKinley Henderson’s
portrayal of Walter “Pops” Washington, it boasts a towering performance worthy
of award consideration.
The first
thing that happens in Austin Pendleton’s expertly realized staging is that the
expansive Riverside Drive apartment on New York’s Upper West Side, one room of
which we’ve been staring at since taking our seats, begins to slowly revolve,
revealing Walt Spangler’s intricately designed set of high-walled, interlocking rooms. It provides an
instant impression of why this “palatial” home, despite its rundown condition,
is so desirable and why it is, in essence, as much a character as any of the people
in the play. When it stops moving, we see the eat-in kitchen, at whose table the
overweight, bathrobe-clad, booze-loving, recently widowed Walter, a retired African-American
cop, is seated in a wheelchair and conversing with a much younger Hispanic man,
Oswaldo (Victor Almanzar). Oswaldo is a close friend of Walter’s ex-con son,
Junior, and is staying here rent-free while he tries to get his act together.
The middle-aged Junior (Ray Anthony Thomas) also lives here, as does his sexpot
girlfriend, Lulu (Rosal Colón).
Despite the
wheelchair, which he uses for comfort, not mobility, Walter is perfectly
ambulatory; this is just one of many things in the play that show how what we
often assume to be one thing turn out to be the other. As Lulu says to Walter:
“I may look how I look—but that don’t mean I AM how I look!”
The
apartment, in which Walter has lived since 1978, is rent-controlled and, while Walter
pays $1,500 a month rent for it, the landlord can get ten times that amount if
he finds a way to remove its tenant. Eight years earlier, Walter, while off
duty in a sleazy bar during the wee hours of the morning, was shot six times by
a white rookie cop. His injuries forced him to retire, and he’s been suing the
city ever since, refusing any settlement, insisting that the shooting was
racially motivated and that the shooter had called him a “nigger,” although no
eyewitness corroborated his assertion. Despite Walter’s bitterly professed
certainty, ambiguities about the incident persist.
Of the
play’s several plot threads, the principal one concerns the very real
possibility that Walter will lose his apartment unless he settles. This becomes
especially clear when he has over for dinner his ex-partner, a female detective
named Audrey O’Connor (Elizabeth Canavan), who professes enormous admiration
for Walter, and her fiancé, the plain-spoken Lt. Dave Caro (Michael Rispoli).
Caro, his white officer’s shirt covered in ribbons and brass, is ambitious and has
his eye on higher places; if he can convince the obstinate Walter to end his
eternal lawsuit, he’ll make a major impression on the powers that be.
As the play
wends its way toward the resolution of the apartment problem, it offers a
cornucopia of dramatic riches, hilariously comic and passionately serious, with
an assortment of complexly detailed and highly colorful characters; each makes
a lasting impression based on how he or she interacts with Walter. Oswaldo, a
recovering drug addict with father issues, is so fond of Walter he calls him Dad,
although Walter’s wary of the guy’s shady past and acquaintances. Oswaldo has
an endearing quality, but in this play you have to be careful about people you
trust. As he sits at the breakfast table with Walter, Oswaldo speaks in his
lively street patois about the importance of eating the right food (almonds and
health water for breakfast), because comfort food, like pie, which Walter is
eating, gives you “Emotionalisms.” The cynical Walter counters that whatever
the so-called experts say is one day going to be reversed: “Almonds: don’t be
surprised if we learn sometime in the future that Almonds cause cancer.”
Next we
meet the skimpily dressed, physically ample Lulu, who also calls Walter Dad;
from where he sits, Lulu has nothing but air between her ears. Told she’s an
accounting student, Walter, nobody’s fool, wonders why, if that’s so, she moves
her lips when reading her horoscope. One of her responsibilities is to walk the
family dog, given to Walter as a companion after his wife died, but which Walter
considers a pest, and which, though we never see it, offers opportunities for several
funny wisecracks. Lulu says she’s pregnant with Junior’s child, delighting Walter
with the prospect of grandfatherhood; however, complications that way lie.
Walter
treats Junior, who sells hot merchandise out of his room, with authoritative
disdain, although Junior responds with genuine affection and concern for his
father’s well-being, begging him to settle his lawsuit and stop paying his “shyster”
lawyers. Any advice about ending the case, though, is like lighting a bomb in
the old man’s heart, especially when it comes from his son.
When it
comes from the two cops, O’Connor and Caro, Walter’s pride, stubbornness, and
anger know no bounds. Caro is as friendly, reasonable, and persuasive as it’s
possible to be, even with his admittedly selfish motives, but the more he
presses Walter the more intransigent the ex-cop becomes, and the more Caro is
forced to show his true colors. Both Walter and Caro are poker players; this informs
their confrontations, and the conclusion to their debate is essentially one of
who’s the better bluffer. Ultimately, Walter raises the stakes dramatically.
What he asks for left me feeling considerable distaste for him, yet I
ultimately had to agree that in his moral universe, his request, egregious as
it is, is perfectly appropriate. It’s somewhat more plausible than the final
scene, which ends the play on a note of sentimentality that feels out of
keeping with what’s come before.
In Mr.
Pendleton’s crafty hands, the pacing, energy, and tonal balance keep the perfectly
chosen ensemble humming; freshness, conviction, and vigor, combined with
authentic character objectives inform one memorable performance after the
other. These actors hold you enthralled from the very first words spoken. Among the biggest
takeaways are Mr. Henderson and Mr. Rispoli. Mr. Henderson’s rage
against all that he’s gone through has Lear-like power, while Mr. Rispoli’s
iron fist in a velvet glove negotiations make what could have been an
unsympathetic role the opposite.
BETWEEN
RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY deserves to be seen widely. It’s filled with dramatic and
comedic surprises and twists, like the vivid scene in which a visiting Church
woman (Liza Colón-Zayas, terrific) manages to combine the sexual with the
spiritual in her ministration to Walter of God’s love. Mr. Guirgis’s vibrant dialogue
has a salty quality that sounds like it comes straight from the streets, but is
loaded with offbeat phrases and expressions that may sound accidental but that only a
master word chef could cook up. As one tiny example, here’s a priceless bit from
Oswaldo, speaking to Walter, early in the play, asking him to confirm that
Oswaldo’s presence isn’t too much of an annoyance: “So I wanna know whatchu
think about that, I mean—if that’s okay, I wanna know if my feelings about your
feelings are the actual feelings that’s happening, and also whatchu think about
that, like, honestly, so—like—whatchu think about that?”
Although BETWEEN
RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY’s universal praise is warranted, and it even may have Broadway possibilities, it still seems to be more of a near no-hitter than an
actual one. Which doesn’t mean I wasn't crazy about it.
